Glasgow Maggie’s Centre scoops architectural Oscar

The Maggie's Centre sits on the site of the former Gartnavel Hospital

BRIAN FERGUSON

A DOUGHNUT-shaped care centre in Glasgow has been named Scotland’s best building at the nation’s annual “architectural Oscars”, held in the Scottish Parliament.

Dutch architects OMA have been honoured with the £25,000 Andrew Doolan Prize for their work on the Maggie’s Centre at Gartnavel Hospital, in the Glasgow’s west end.

The Maggie's Centre in Gartnavel

The prize has been confirmed just weeks after the £3 million project lost out on Britain’s most coveted architectural honour - the Stirling Prize - to a new research centre at Cambridge University.

The Maggie’s Centre was honoured ahead of the main cultural contender, the revamp of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, which was completed last December.

Maggie’s Gartnavel was the eighth centre to be opened by the charity set up in honour of Edinburgh cancer patient Maggie Jencks, who began developing plans for a series of care centres which would offer an escape from hospital wards and waiting rooms.

The first one opened in 1996, the year after Mrs Jencks, who was married to architect Charles Jencks, passed away.

Maggie’s Gartnavel was built to coincide with the relocation of the Beatson cancer unit from the Western General Hospital in Glasgow.

Created by architects Rem Koolhas and Ellen van Loon, who worked with Mrs Jencks’ daughter Lily on the designs for the centre, it has a distinctive doughnut shape, allowing all of its rooms to surround an internal landscaped garden.

The area outside has been landscaped to give the impression of being in a “pavilion in the woods”, while there are no corridors or isolated rooms, only a series of interlocking spaces with a clever use of sliding walls to open and close areas, offering flexibility.

Opened last October, it was the first permanent building the architectural practice, which also designed the Seattle Central Library and the Netherlands Embassy in Berlin, had worked on in the UK.

Six buildings in total were honoured by the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland, with the others including a new revamp of the Corinthian bar, restaurant and nightclub complex in Glasgow, a new block of flats on the city’s Fore Street surrounded by traditional Victorian tenements, an extension to an Ayrshire primary school, and a private home at Boreraig on the isle of Skye, which was inspired by a traditional blackhouse.

They were whittled down from an initial shortlist of 14, which had also included the project led by artist Martin Creed to transform the Scotsman Steps in Edinburgh, Cape Cove, a holiday home on the banks of Loch Long, and the transformation of a ruined mill in Caithness into a private home.

Judges of the awards, which have been running since 2002, said the Maggie’s Centre was the “clear winner.”

Veteran Glasgow architect Andy MacMillan, chair of the judging panel, said: “This year we visited 14 projects throughout Scotland which were widely varying in scale and building type. Their quality bodes well for the future of Scottish architecture, but the five special mentions are of truly international quality and the winner is a gem.”

The full citation from the judges about the winning project said: “This is an extraordinary building – a place of calm, simultaneously welcoming and open.

“Maggie’s Centres provide support for people with cancer, their families and friends. Exceptional architecture and innovative spaces make people feel better.

“This single-level building, a ring of interlocking rooms, is close to the Beatson Cancer Centre. The spaces feel casual but allow for privacy. The approach is about modest external expression, embracing a courtyard garden to generate a unique place of gentle contemplation and an exemplary caring environment.”

Culture secretary Fiona Hyslop praised the “outstanding quality” of the architecture to emerge in the awards, which are jointly funded by the Scottish Government.

After picking up the award, Ms Van Loon said: “It’s a fantastic honour for us, especially as this was our first ever project in Scotland.

“It was a lovely experience working in Scotland and we had a really supportive client.

“We set out to design the building to be more like a home than a care centre and the biggest compliment we’ve had is that so many people have said they would like to live there.”

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

The Scotsman provides news, events and sport features from the Edinburgh area. For the best up to date information relating to Edinburgh and the surrounding areas visit us at The Scotsman regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website The Scotsman requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.